Hollandazed: Thoughts, Ideas, and Miscellany

In This Guilty Land, each player represents an abstract idea: Justice (which seeks the abolition of slavery) and Oppression (which seeks its retention and spread). One thing I've heard from many folks online is that they would be very uncomfortable playing Oppression, or asking another player to take on that role - they can't imagine themselves playing the game at all.  The first thing I want to say is, that's a perfectly valid response. The game's not for everyone, nor is it intended to be, and if you don't want to play the game, that's okay. Not every cultural product...

Because I primarily design wargames, most of my designs are for two players. As a result, the structure of the game is usually a series of alternating player turns or impulses: player A then player B then player A then player B and on and on until one of you wins. Now, there's usually a little more to it than that. In the Shields & Swords II games, for example, it's possible for a player to take two turns in a row, while the initiative roll in Supply Lines determines which side goes first in a given Game Turn. But...

Before we stumbled into the world of board games, I did a lot of different creative things. Partially this was because I was (and still am) interested in a wide variety of things, but partially it was a matter of trying a lot of things and seeing what would stick. The answer turned out to be board games, and wargames specifically, and I've never really looked back or wondered what might-have-been. But every once in a while, I do feel the siren call of other disciplines. I get the itch to write fiction, and so for two or three weeks,...

Note: this article originally appeared on Board Game Geek on August 12th. It's being reposted here because I was lazy and forgot to write a blogpost for today. It is customary I suppose to begin a designer diary with where the idea for the game came from - what the impetus was for the design. I wish I could say that it started with a theme or a mechanism or a player dynamic, but the simple and mercenary truth is that I designed Northern Pacific because I wanted to be a full-time game designer. That's an ambition I had almost...

Around the time that Charlemagne came out, I stealth-announced the next game in my series of "cup adjustment" solitaire games, Aurelian, Restorer of the World. A few months later, I started working on the rules, prototype map, and counter-mix, and then I had to set the whole thing aside while I tried (perhaps in vain) to put a dent in the ever-growing submission pile. Mary pointed out that since it says "Lead Game Designer and Chief Bottle-Washer" on my business card, that maybe I should take a break from the submission pile and design something, and also maybe wash some...